In the view of the author most of the conventional weapons, in particular small arms, are weapons of Mass Killing: According to a Red Cross inquiry [42] Assault Rifles, like AK47s, Handguns, and Land Mines, caused 64%, 10% and 10% of civilian casualties, respectively. The remaining 16% are almost equally shared between Hand Grenades, Artillery (including fragmentation and incinerating bombs), Mortars, and Major Weapons. During the 20th century these weapons had been used to kill 34 million soldiers in combat, 80 million civilians, plus soldiers who died from wounds, accidents or disease. The world was "fortunate" that only two nuclear bombs have been dropped in warfare until now. They killed "only" ~200'000 people. Nevertheless, the nuclear arsenal has to be on the top of the WMD-category, since it has the potential to erase humans from our planet in almost no time.

LITERATURE MAKES A DISTINCTION BETWEEN WMD AND INFORMATION WARFARE  THEY ARE NOT THE SAME

The United States faces a bleak future, according to the Commission on National Security/21st Century. In its January report (www.nssg.gov/phaseIIIwoc.pdf), the bipartisan panel says the country will face a marked decline in political, military and economic power if it doesn't shore up its security.

Chief among the panel's concerns is the nation's information infrastructure. "In addition to weapons of mass destruction, we have to worry about Internet-based weapons of mass disruption," says Newt Gingrich, a commission member and former speaker of the House of Representatives, in an interview with Information Security.

CYBERWAR AS WMD IS EXCESSIVE USE OF LANGUAGE, NOT REFLECTING THE REALITY

As cyberwar gains operational maturity, the discipline has emerged as a tool of finesse and not brute force, in part to counter political concerns about the fallout from unrestricted computer attacks.

''When you're discussing computer network warfare, you can get completely derailed and talk about worms and viruses and self-propagating programs and everyone thinks it's like unconstrained weapons of mass destruction,'' said Army Col. David Kirk, deputy commander of the Joint Information Operations Center.

Those uncontained scenarios are ''a possibility, but it's too indiscriminate'' for Defense Dept. planners, said Col. David Stinson, vice commander of the Air Force Information Warfare Center.

AGROTERRORIST ATTACKS ARE NOT WMD

Peter Chalk is an expert on transnational terrorism at the RAND Corporation, February 1, 2001 Jane's Intelligence Review HEADLINE: The US agricultural sector: a new target for terrorism? //VT2002acsln

Quite apart from their relative ease, attacks against agriculture are comparatively risk free in the sense that they neither cross the threshold of mass destruction, nor, in most cases, do they represent a direct threat to those carrying them out. Destroying pig or cattle production would be unlikely to attract the same response as a more 'conventional' bioattack against a heavily populated centre such as Los Angeles or San Francisco.

(14) 'Weapon of mass destruction' means any device designed to release radiation or radioactivity at a level that could result in internal or external bodily injury or death to a person."

ARMY DEFINES WMD AS A WEAPON WHICH CAN HARM LOTS OF PEOPLE USING CHEMICALS, DISEASE OR RADIOACTIVITY

"Military Support to Civil Authorities the role of the Chemical Corps," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Hook, Army Chemical Review, January 2000

"Among the challenges faced by agencies responsible for responding to these incidents is to develop an adequate definition of WMD. U.S. Code Title 50, Chapter 40, Section 2302, Defense Against Weapons of Mass Destruction, defines it as follows: The term "weapon of mass destruction" means any weapon or device that is intended, or has the capability, to cause death or serious bodily injury to a significant number of people through the release, dissemination, or impact of (A) toxic or poisonous chemicals or their precursors; (B) a disease organism; or (C) radiation or radioactivity.

In the modern world, nuclear weapons are not the only weaponof mass destruction. The Review therefore addressed the continuing risks arising from the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons. The Government is committed to their elimination. But the difficulty and complexity of this task should not be underestimated."

According to the Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, a weapon, or for our purposes, a weapon of mass destruction, "can be nuclear, chemical, biological, and radiological weapons, but excludes the means of transporting or propelling the weapon where such means is a separable and divisible part of the weapon." This "weapon" is what must be destroyed, because, according to the official definition, they "are capable of a high order of destruction and/or of being used in such a manner as to destroy large numbers of people."

A "weapons system" is much different. According to the Department of Defense Dictionary, a weapons system is "a combination of one or more weapons with all related equipment, materials, services, personnel and means of delivery and deployment (if applicable) required for self-sufficiency."74 Using these official definitions cuts through the jargon and shows that more than five years after the Soviet collapse, not a single weapon of mass destruction--not one nuclear, chemical, or biological warhead--has been destroyed with U.S. aid. Treaty-limited systems include chemical and biological weapons, but U.S. assistance has done nothing so far to ensure they are "destroyed and removed from a threatening posture." The same can be said for most nuclear weapons, though the unclassified Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) reports fail to inform the reader. Most of what the public knows of such violations is from leaks of concerned government officials to the press."